Chris Green: Rockford teen's death perplexing

ROCKFORD — When I interviewed Christopher McGrady on the afternoon of July 16, I could tell he had had a few drinks.

It didn't bother me.

He was coherent.

He wasn't behind the wheel. He was in his home.

And he was grieving the loss of his 15-year-old son.

Christian McGrady was shot in the back of the head shortly after midnight on July 9 outside his father's North Central Avenue residence. He died July 13 in the pediatric intensive care unit at Rockford Memorial Hospital. Police said he was the victim of a drive-by shooting. An arrest has yet to be made.

Christian was the youngest victim in a deadly string of violence that left eight people dead and five wounded between July 5 and July 18. In a year that has produced 21 Rockford homicide investigations and nearly as many public candlelight vigils, McGrady's death came and went with little outcry.

Why?

Was it because his death did not come until four days after he was shot?

Was it because eight deaths, Christian's being the seventh, in less than two weeks is a lot for anyone to process.

Or, was it because people took one look at the teen and where the shooting occurred and chalked it up to another at-risk minority falling victim to living in a high-risk neighborhood?

When I spoke to Christopher McGrady, I told him his son's life, no matter how short, amounted to more than being number 13 in the city's yearly homicide count. I asked him to tell me who Christian was and what made him special to him.

He told me his son "loved life."

"He loved McDonald's, Taco Bell. He called his step-mom, mom. He loved the lawn mower, always cutting someone's grass. Just an outgoing happy kid," he said. "And at 15 years old, he still gave me hugs."

Christopher McGrady also told me about himself and how he had volunteered at Kennedy Middle School for six months before being hired last year by Rockford Public Schools as a paraprofessional.

He told me how happy he was to be able to move his three sons out of Concord Commons, a Winnebago County public housing complex, and into the home he was renting in the 800 block of North Central Avenue, across from Andrews Park.

During the interview, two teens, a boy and a girl, came to the McGrady residence to express their condolences to Christian's father. Christopher McGrady spoke to the teens as if they were his own children, and he was soon consoling them.

Before I left, I spoke with neighbors, one of whom confirmed Christian used to cut her grass.

When I got back to the newspaper, I searched Google and Facebook, the great digital scrapbooks of everyone's life, in hopes of finding more about Christian. I came up empty.

At 15, any type of criminal record is sealed from the public. But police assured me Christian had no criminal record to conceal.

At the time of the shooting, police found no drugs on him. An autopsy found no traces of drugs in him.

The only picture I had of Christian was not that of a young man sporting gang colors or throwing up gang signs.

Instead, the picture I had showed a young man with short braids, wearing a white tanktop T-shirt, and a peach-fuzz mustache framing a shy smile. I saw a young man who had yet to make his mark in the world.

By all accounts Christian was a good kid.

Christopher McGrady told me his son would have been a freshman this year at Auburn High School. The same grade and school where my youngest son attends. Maybe Christian would have been someone my son would have liked, someone I would have invited into my home.

Christian's death left too many unanswered questions. None more perplexing than "Why him?"

It's not enough to say Christian was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was at his father's home.

Chris Green: 815-987-1241; cgreen@rrstar.com; @chrisfgreen

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